Update | October 2025
Spotlight
This past month saw welcome news: the announcement of a $40 a year price for long-acting PrEP: generic lenecapavir (LEN) should be available in early 2027.
👉 Read our related papers:
- Lessons for long-acting lenacapavir: catalysing equitable PrEP access in low-income and middle-income countries by Sharonann Lynch, Rachel Cohen, Matthew Kavanagh, Agrata Sharma, Yvette Raphael, Yogan Pillay, Linda-Gail Bekker
- Long-Acting HIV Medicines and the Pandemic Inequality Cycle – Rethinking Access by Winnie Byanyima, Linda-Gail Bekker, Matthew Kavanagh
Feature Event: Annual Lecture on the Right to Health
On 8 September, Dr. Tlaleng Mofokeng, UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health and Senior Scholar at the Center, delivered our Annual Lecture on the politics of health and human rights.
Her message was uncompromising: pandemics cannot be confronted without human rights at the center. Yet the institutions meant to uphold those rights are faltering. As the world contends with HIV/AIDS, COVID-19, Ebola, and Mpox, the erosion of human rights has weakened responses and left the most vulnerable exposed.
Dr. Mofokeng argued that the right to health must be mobilised as a tool of resilience, turning principle into practice at moments of crisis. The lecture was moderated by Center Director Matthew Kavanagh.
👉 Watch the full lecture here.
Recent HIV and TB Publications and Events
Webinar Series: Speed-up, Scale-up TB Testing! Our recent two-part webinar series with the Diagnostics Equity Consortium focused on the evolving world of TB testing, including near point of care tests.
In the first session, speakers focused on the latest testing tools and strategies that have potential to drive change, including near point of care tests. The second session, on 2 October, will center on the ideal placement and implementation of these tools and strategies.
👉 Watch the first section of the webinar here . Register for the second session of the webinar here .
For the French language version, watch the first session here .
A New Guide for SRHR Strategic Litigation
Our new series on strategic litigation for sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) shows how courts are becoming arenas in which the future of rights is contested. Echoing Dr. Mofokeng’s recent address to the Human Rights Council, The series examines both the risks and the opportunities of using law to safeguard dignity, expand protections, and counter anti-rights movements.
👉 Read the guide here .
A New Working Paper
Since January 2025, U.S. policy and funding cuts have posed major setbacks to global health, threatening decades of progress in immunization and risking resurgences of vaccine-preventable diseases. In their new working paper, “Global health equity of political decisions: Trump, the US, and immunization,” the Center’s Nina Schwalbe, Juan-Pablo Gutiérrez, Brian Wahl, and Susanna Lehtimaki use the 4As framework (affordability, availability, accessibility, and acceptability) to show how these shifts are derailing vaccine access and weaking countries’ abilities to maintain pre-2025 coverage. The authors warn that unless affected countries and donors step in to close funding gaps, the gains of the last 20 years towards equitable vaccine access may be lost.
👉 Read the working paper here .
Engaging on Palestine
At the Emergency Conference on Palestine, Dr. Mofokeng spoke as representatives from Bolivia, Cuba, Colombia, Indonesia, Iraq, Libya, Malaysia, Namibia, Nicaragua, Oman, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and South Africa released a Joint Statement on the Conclusion of the Emergency Conference on Palestine, pledging new measures to uphold international law and support Palestinian self-determination.
Together, these interventions contain a single message: health is inseparable from rights, and rights inseparable from politics.